All My Cats

by Bohumil Hrabal

  I smiled when they asked me to get into the ambulance, bits of glass still dropping out of my coat, and I smiled again while being X-rayed at the Nymburk hospital, and I smiled when they put iodine on my head wounds and reset my broken ribs. I smiled the entire week I spent lying in the Nymburk hospital, while a few remaining fragments of glass fell out of my hair for good luck, because I was saved, I was relieved of having my guilt and my bad conscience drive me to hang myself from the willow tree by the brook, as Mařenka had predicted I would, she who, shortly before she died, had come to us to hunt for mushrooms and left behind her handbag with the two round green handles. Whenever I was asked how I survived the accident, I laughed out loud and told everyone it had been magnificent, like the most powerful moral, symphonic music. The unhappy driver lay with me in the hospital and, just like me and like my wife, he could not turn back the clock a second, nor could he ever push it forward a second, so that what happened had to happen, as I told everyone, and it was magnificent.

  What I told myself privately was that if one day I should ever decide to leave this world, nothing would be more wonderful than the way chosen by my beloved Jackson Pollock, my master of action painting, of dripping, a painter who, when he had created the most beautiful works I had ever seen, when he had drunk cisterns of whiskey and smoked enough Pall Malls to stretch round the earth, he had dinner in the Cedar Tavern and drove off in his car, only to experience in body, and all of his soul, what my own fate had tried, unsuccessfully, to accomplish with me. He crashed and died instantly.

  When a member of the police force, a pleasant young man, asked me whether I would add my name to the indictment against the driver, I declared, and signed off on it, that I would not be pressing charges, that what I had experienced had been magnificent and that the driver, Mr. Máchal, was left to deal with the guilt of having driven heedlessly onto the highway from a side road, trusting to blind luck that nothing was coming. He had thus burdened himself with guilt but, by the same act, he relieved me of feeling guilty for all the cats I had killed, and in return, they rewarded me with what happened at that intersection. Mr. Máchal and I sat together on our hospital beds and I held his hand while he asked me over and over again if I was angry with him for the collision, and each time I gave him the same answer, and he laughed at it till his broken face grimaced with pain: “Mr. Máchal, if your luck is bad enough you can break your back making love in bed.”

  And at that moment, those three tomcats in Kersko appeared to me and I saw in all this a nudge from fate telling me to get back to them as soon as possible. In no time, I was pouring them some milk and as soon as I was able, I walked with them again along the white picket fence and told them glorious tales about our extended family of cats, and then, moved by the moment, I picked up those three tomcats one by one, pressed them to my face, and whispered sweet words of love to them, and to the cats that were no longer with us, either by accident, or by my own hand.

  More than that, I had to laugh when I learned, to my astonishment, how the parallel lines of our lives had crossed and connected at the Mochov gas pumps, for Mr. Máchal had bought a little cottage in Nymburk from my friend and mentor, Mr. Marysko. He had bought the little house where for ten years, as if in a submarine, Mr. Marysko and I had written our first poems and our neopoetic manifesto, and where we got drunk over the great good fortune that we had come to understand what Surrealism was, and that remarkable encounter brought together not only the Surrealists, but also, as I saw now, myself, Mr. Marysko and Mr. Máchal, who had purchased from him that famous little house in which we had all been so happy, and where we had once been so gobsmacked by fate that we lay there, writhing in the claws of the sphinx who held our youthful grapevines in its grip, and now the circle had closed, thanks to that fortunate misfortune at the Mochov gas station, the accident that had erased the guilt from my criminal record. Because not even a cat can be killed with impunity. What will I do with all my cats?

  Epilogue

  Early that evening I walked down to the frozen brook. My broken ribs were still sore, but a week after the accident I was already feeling better. Not that I expected anything different, since my role model was Franta Št’astný who, when he broke two ribs on a Jawa 250, had his chest tightly bandaged and then, two hours later, went on to win the 350. The sun was already setting and the sky in the west was pink and, as the blue above me darkened, the trembling stars gradually began to shimmer in the heavens. When I walked through a small wooded area, I scared up a herd of roe deer that were pawing away the snow and pine needles to make places to bed down in the sandy ground and I felt miserable because by frightening away those diminutive deer I had done something amiss again. But what could I do? After what for me was a fortunate car accident, I had slowed down. I felt at ease wherever I was. I had no desire to take the bus to Prague or, if I were in Prague, to go back to Kersko. I was happy just sitting at home. The three toms slept all the time, as though eternity were time enough, and that autumn and winter they were indifferent to everything. They ate and slept, and as they slept I was able to sit for hours and gaze out the window, no longer at birch and pine boughs, no longer waiting for the last leaf to fall, but simply staring, cradling my bandaged ribs, which were sore, but what I felt was not pain, more like a warming ache that seemed like a kind of satisfaction. Somehow, the accident had worked to my benefit. Somehow, with those broken ribs, I finally understood there was little point in going to those literary gatherings, or going to pubs where people were waiting for me to show up. What was the point of going anywhere, now that I was close to turning seventy? Somehow, the accident took a weight off my mind. My body was now covered with scars and bruises and for the first time, my hands and feet and the nape of my neck and my back began to ache from having been rattled and bounced and bruised in the Ford Escort. And those twinges of pain, absolution for my sins, were as valuable to me as having a conviction struck from my criminal record. For me, the accident was like the electroshock therapy they administer to patients on psych wards. Maybe it meant I’d stop writing. Maybe the accident had erased what fired me up. Maybe something had happened to me that made it less likely I’d end up in a mental hospital. Everything that had once cried out within me now fell silent, the pressure of everything feline that had broken my heart and mind had somehow been vented, and I sat at home by the window like a liberated prisoner, capable of nothing more than staring into the heart of silence and tranquility.

  And now, as I crunched along over the frozen snow beside the icebound brook, the wind rattled in the light-brown reeds and the northern bullfinches let me walk right up to the frozen thistles where they perched, and after flashing the ruddy garlands of their brick-colored breasts at me they flew off to other thistles. The black woods loomed across the frozen river and I walked along in high black boots and white socks through a landscape I have loved since I was six years old, a drab landscape, and therefore especially beautiful, a flat land you can walk through and no longer see anything around you, but rather you can commune with yourself, or simply let your soul commune with the spirit and the elements. When I was six and walked past the brewery and through the countryside along the Labe River, toward Komárenský Island, I was drawn forward, toward what was beyond it, what was on the other side of Písty, and once in Písty, to what was beyond the horizon on the other side of Kostomlátky. And so, back then, and for twenty years after that, I was drawn to walk, and go on walking, on and on, to see what was beyond the horizon. I walked and then rode my bike all the way to Hamburg. But today, horizons no longer pull me toward them, and I am happy where I am, happy that I simply am, that I can carry myself just a little bit further, and at the same time, dream about anything, think about anything, and even allow myself the luxury of thinking about nothing at all, and thus about everything. And so I walk through the deep, glittering twilight, the snow crunching under my boots, deep, frozen snow, as though I were breaking through the glass covering a hot bed, and in fact, fo
r the first time since the accident I realized that until the moment we smashed into that transport truck at ninety kilometers an hour, I believed, no, I felt, that other people were all far smarter than I was, far more moral than I was, far better looking than I was, far more . . . that everything people had was more perfect than what I had, that they had all been born with a little pearl at the bottom of their cup, whereas what I had at the bottom of mine, from childhood on, was a feeling of guilt. From childhood on. I looked at people guiltily, and even during my childhood, when some older boys I’d never seen before would ride by on bicycles and I’d stare at them, they’d dismount and give me a wallop and then get back on their bikes and take off, feeling smug, and I’d go back where I’d come from, holding my face. Or when I first went to school, I was ashamed because I felt I’d done something wrong, something so terrible that boys I did not know seemed to see evidence of some crime in my insolent face and punish me for it. Perhaps the blows I received were advance payback for deeds I would eventually commit. Perhaps they were meant to smarten me up while there was still time. Perhaps they were for the cats and kittens I beat to death in a mail bag. That may have been why, as a boy and later as a young man, I was constantly running away, escaping, always trying to reach the horizon so that I could hide on the other side. But all I ever learned was that, having reached that limit, another horizon would open up, and that I had to keep on driving myself, escaping toward a horizon line that was forever receding, until today, here, as I walked beside the frozen river, the entire horizon turned back and came at me from all sides and its lines passed through me, creating a central point that did not impinge on me but rather came back to my hands and feet like a boomerang. The snow crunched under my tall black rubber-soled boots that left behind me in the deep crust the outlines of large acacia leaves. I turned around again and saw that I had left behind footprints punctured in the snow, as though I had waded through a cake with sugar frosting.

  When they released me from the Nymburk hospital a week after the accident, I went straight to the Golden Tiger, because my role model was Niki Lauda, who was almost burned to death in his racing car, and five weeks later, got behind the wheel of a Monoposto Formula 1 as if nothing had happened. And there I met Miroslav Ondříček, Miloš Forman’s cameraman, and he laughed when I reminded him of something that had happened to him fifteen years before when, celebrating the birth of his son, he and a friend rammed his car into a wall and he smashed himself up so badly he nearly died. Mr. Ondříček made it through and they sewed up his face, and he showed me where the stitches were and added with a hearty laugh: “Did you know that just last week they extracted a tiny fragment of glass from my eyebrow?”

  Now I was walking beside the frozen river. I looked at the surface of the ice, which was still pink from what was left of the sunset, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. I looked again, and there, several yards from a stand of bent and broken reeds, was a live swan. I was alarmed because the wind would blow in from the north again and, judging from the sky, the temperature that night would drop to fifteen or twenty degrees below zero, and I was afraid the swan would freeze to death. I walked down to the stand of reeds and looked at that beautiful bird, and indeed, it was a swan. Its neck was graceful but its eyes were burning with anger, anger at me for being there and staring at her, and I saw the snow swirl across the frozen water, the color of ground cinnamon and it was piling up around the swan like waves and watery foam and spume rising from the prow of a boat underway. What I feared most had already occurred: the swan was trapped in the ice. It was three yards from me, almost within reach, and because I was afraid the ice might give way beneath me, I lay down on my broken ribs and very slowly inched my way forward on my elbows, the way I’d learned to do in the army, and as I lay on my stomach on the ceiling of the frozen river, the cinnamon snow blew into my eyes, and when I’d pulled myself closer I reached out with my hand to the swan, and she bent her neck forward, her eyes even angrier, and with a powerful blow from her beak, she jabbed the back of my hand and hissed at me, and even though blood was now gushing from my hand, I grabbed her wings with the fingers of both hands but she was already half-frozen and she jabbed at my hand again and it was like a blow from an axe. I knew if I approached the swan close enough to lean over her, she would jab me in the face with her beak, a powerful knife blow between the eyes, and I knew she would break her own legs, which were frozen solid in the ice, rather than let me touch her. Then, a short distance from the swan, I saw a patch of open water, a hole in the ice no bigger than a hand puppet or a small board, and the black river water was flowing past and the surface rippled and I was afraid to move any closer. But mainly, I was afraid of getting hit by those wings. I had once picked up a swan bodily with both hands and she struck my head so hard with both wings that I passed out. I inched my way back to the riverbank on broken ribs, my hands bleeding, and gazed with admiration at that swan, hoping that a thaw might come, that the sun might shine tomorrow, that the snow and ice under the swan might melt, and that when I came back the next day, the swan would be gone. After I had climbed back up to the path along the riverbank, there, as if fallen from heaven, lay a large branch. I picked it up and returned to the stand of bent and broken reeds and tried to free the swan, but by what became of the branch, I saw how I would have fared. With mighty blows from her beak, the swan first scattered the bark in all directions and then, hissing, she smashed the bough, and with a powerful wrench of her neck, she jerked it out of my hands and flung it away, even though she remained firmly frozen in the ice, and then she averted her angry eyes and ruffled her feathers, stroking and preening herself with her beak, smoothing her feathers again. I walked away, but kept turning back, fascinated by this apparition. In the dull mirror of the evening sky, she went on preening her feathers, smoothing them close to her body with her neck and her head and her beak, which she used as a comb, though only a short while ago it had been more like a pair of garden shears.

  I retraced my steps, walking in the footprints I had left with my high boots when I had made my way there to the swan, who had rejected my help, my attempt to free her. I had intended to carry her away, and it was as if the swan knew I would carry her all the way home and feed her until spring came, or until she decided to leave and flew away.

  When I returned home, my ribs began to ache so badly it was as though I had broken them again, and it began to dawn on me, as my mind began working again involuntarily, that the incident with the swan did not just happen, that my dead cats had set the swan up for me, that the swan who refused to let me save her had been placed there by my destiny, which comes from outside of one, a part, a fragment, of a message from elsewhere and that in fact, since I was capable of beating to death those cats who had so passionately desired nothing more than to be with me in the world, so this swan, whom I had wanted to help survive and be in the world, instead sacrificed herself, preferring to die, to deny herself life, to show me, not that the opposite of everything is true, but on the contrary, that the opposite of everything is not true and that once again, I was guilty, just as I had been guilty all my life, even though I did not know why or what could have been the cause. And so I staggered home. By now it was dark and I was guided only by a sliver of sky visible through the treetops.

  Back home, I sat down on a chair again like one paralyzed, and the three tomcats tried to cheer me up, they wrestled and pretended that a meshugge Stunde had come over them, they turned somersaults and leaned against my arms and looked into my eyes, but I was dying from pangs of guilt for not having saved the swan against her will, though I only wanted to save her so that I might calm my conscience. And so I took some sleeping pills, but I woke up every half hour and looked at my watch and couldn’t wait until daybreak, when I would once more set out with a small ladder, the kind they use when they rescue children who have broken through the ice on a pond, and I planned to lay the ladder on the ice and crawl along it until I reached my swan, and I looked for a pair of
leather gloves in the shed so she couldn’t peck through my skin.

  I thought of that evening when I sat with Mr. Ondříček, Mr. Forman’s cinematographer, who had rammed his car into a wall when he was celebrating the birth of his son, and suddenly I remembered a woman who had sat down beside us. It had been raining at the time, the seventh day after my accident, and she came in on two white crutches, wearing a faux-leather raincoat and a similar kind of hat and she was heavily made-up, and the water was streaming off her umbrella. She drank beer after beer with us and she knew all the soccer teams fielded by Sparta Prague and Slavia Prague for the past fifty years. Suddenly she turned to me and, laying her lacquered nails on my sleeve, she said: “And now I’ll tell you something. You can write it up and go straight to your publisher for an advance. I’ve been a member of the Sparta sports club since I was three, and my father would take me there, and now imagine this: I was seventeen years old, it was under the Protectorate and the country was occupied by the Germans, as you know, and I went to the box seat that my father and I had together and when I entered the box, the stadium was sold out, and as I was waiting for my father to show up, an official came and said, ‘Just a moment, Miss,’ and into the box stepped the king of comedians himself, Vlasta Burian, and he told me that sadly, I no longer had any right to this box seat because he’d read the news and learned that unfortunately my father had been executed because he approved of the assassination of the Reichsprotektor, Mr. Heydrich, and the best he could do was give me a standing-room-only ticket, and if I was to remain here, there would be incalculable consequences for the entire club because anyone who approved of the death of Herr Protektor and was executed for it could no longer be considered a citizen of this country. And so I got up in tears and as I was making my way through the crowd to the exit I saw two of the stars, Vojta and Tonda Bradáč, along with their younger brother, Ludvík, coming toward me and they opened their arms and embraced me, because they liked me, and they asked me why I was crying. I told them why, and Vojta and Tonda shouted that if I weren’t in that box, they were not going to play, and they asked Ludvík to take me with him into the Slavia club box. And they did. They took me there, but instead of watching the soccer match, I stared at the floor, at the cigarette butts and matchsticks and beer cups, and I wept. Write about that and you’ll merely have to mention it to the editors in the Writers’ Publishing House and then drop in and pick up your advance, because you too are our king of comedy,” she said, and drank her tenth beer and I drank more beers than ever before.